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The following is a press release by Voice of the Copts, an organization trying to shine a light on the incredible persecution faced by Egyptian Christians today. Sadly, the devastating details of how unbearable life has become for Egyptians Christans under that country's Islamic regime are being all but ignored by the mainstream media and Western leaders.

On Sunday afternoon, Egyptian police surrounded Saint Mark’s Coptic Cathedral of Cairo, the headquarters of the Coptic Pope, to protect it from a Muslim mob that had been assailing the Christian place of worship with stones, firebombs and gunfire for hours on end.

Inside, a liturgy was being held for eight Christians who had been brutally murdered during a Muslim rampage three days earlier, when Muslims took revenge upon an entire Christian neighborhood after a Christian man dared to protect a young Christian girl from being raped at the hands of a Muslim.

This sequence of bloody events took place in the Cairo suburb of Al Khosous, a town of about three million with a Christian majority. It started when a Christian man got into a fistfight with a Muslim who was trying to kidnap and rape a Christian girl. In his fierce defense of the innocent girl, who was likely to never be seen again by her family, the Christian man fatally wounded the Musim assailant.

Within hours of this horrible incident, revenge stirred in Muslim neighborhoods. A general state of panic and terror ensued. Groups of Muslims attacked a Baptist Church setting it on fire. With firebombs (Molotov cocktails) and other weapons, Muslims destroyed the homes and businesses of Christians and looted the contents.

Both Muslim and Coptic citizens who witnessed the tragic eruption phoned Cairo radio and TV stations desperately appealing to them to broadcast a request for the police to come to the scene of the crime.

The Muslim rampage claimed the lives of eight Christians and one Muslim. Only after the situation began to calm down did the police arrive, which is customary procedure in Egypt's more recent history.

Voice of the Copts calls on Europe and the United States to attach stated conditions to the taxpayers’ funds promised to the regime of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi demanding true evidence that Egypt guarantees human rights and equality under the law for all citizens.

We ask that leaders of the Western church, as participants in interfaith dialogue, request of Muslim leaders to publicly voice their opposition to the mistreatment of Christians and non-Muslims in general in Egypt and elsewhere where Islam is practiced and remains the dominant ideology.